


No One Dies of a Broken Heart

by fireheart93



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Hopeful Ending, and weirdly more canon compliant, fixing the dumb canon death to make it less dumb, seqals do not interact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28963227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireheart93/pseuds/fireheart93
Summary: Many stories have been told about how Padme Amidala died. This is the story of how she lived, fought, and died fighting.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	No One Dies of a Broken Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is definitely an agressive-agressive attempt to fix the absolute nightmare that is "She has lost the will to live".

She lets them take her children.

It hurts physically, an echo of the pain that pushed them from her body, and now she pushes them further still. But she has been a politician since she was 14 years old and her children (hers, hers, not his) will never be safe under the new regime. Palpatine will be looking for them, looking to use them, children of a martyred mother, the bright future of his new Empire, children very likely to grow up to wield the power of their father. He will keep their paternity secret; whatever is left of Anakin, his role in the new Empire will not be that of a father, more likely an enforcer, the monster in the shadows, the threat against those who step out of line. She sees all this clearly, if not dispassionately. The Jedi talk of destiny, of what her children must do, of the balance they must restore. All she's concerned with is keeping her children alive and out of Palpatine's hands. So she lets them take them.

Bail takes Leia. He has wanted a child for as long as Padmé has known him, whispered his longing to her during late nights filled with too much work. There is a brief discussion about whether it may be too obvious, Bail turning up with a daughter immediately after Padmé, his friend, supposedly dies in childbirth. But he's been looking into adoption for a while, and in truth they have no better option. The children cannot go to someone who doesn't know the secret of who they are, and they can't risk telling more people than absolutely necessary. They will put a delay on the official documentation, Bail will take a leave of absence from the senate for personal reasons, and by the time he returns no one should connect his living adopted daughter with Padmé's dead baby. He tries to hide the joy on his face when they reach that decision, but Padmé cannot begrudge him it. He will love her daughter, perhaps better than she is capable of now, and his honest delight in Leia eases the ache she feels. Leia will be as wanted by her adoptive parents as she once was by her birth parents, with far fewer complications. That will have to be enough.

For a while they discuss Bail taking them both. No one outside the medical facility knows Padmé gave birth to twins. If Palpatine is looking for a single baby, adopting twins might muddy the water further. But in the end, they decide against it. More Jedi destiny bullshit. Padmé hates it. Anakin had had a destiny, for all the good it did him, and she hates to see them look at her babies as if they are interchangeable, as if it doesn't matter which of them lives as long as one of them gets old enough to carry the weight of fixing this mess. Already she can see differences between them, Leia's gaze steady, like she's measuring up everyone who gets close enough for her to see, Luke's restless movement, as if he's already eager to crawl, to move, to see what's beyond his horizon. That could get him into trouble, push him too far too soon. She needs to make sure his horizon is very far away. It's a risk, but there are few places in the universe that Anakin swore never to return to. Tatooine is one of them.

She lets Obi-Wan take Luke. He looks so old now, broken in a way she cannot imagine. He loved Anakin as much as she did, perhaps even loves him still (she doesn't, she doesn't, she doesn't). In a distant part of her mind she thinks perhaps she should hate him, the man who let her husband down, then cut him down and left him, but she doesn't. How can she when it's painfully clear he killed something in himself that day, even if he failed to kill Anakin. She cannot image the strength that must have taken. She's not sure she would have been capable of it; she cannot wish that Obi-Wan wasn't. For two days he will not hold the babies, will not look at them, joins in the debate about their future without ever using their names. She grows tired of it, and they have decided that Obi-Wan will deliver Luke and she cannot send her son away with a man who will not look at him. So on the third night she simply places Luke in his arms and then moves away to pick up Leia for her midnight feed, giving Obi-Wan no choice but to hold him. Once Leia is settled she looks back at them and her heart breaks. Obi-Wan has always seemed so worldly, above it all, not unemotional but controlled, contained, the perfect Jedi Master. There is nothing of the Jedi about him now, pain scrawled across his face like a scar, jagged and unmistakable. She had thought his refusal to acknowledge the twins stemmed from blame, that he saw them as the first steps Anakin had taken away from the path of a true Jedi, the path that had led to that awful day on Mustafar (she refuses to see them that way, and she has always had good control over her thoughts). Looking at him now it's clear that she was wrong. For all the pain on his face there is love there too, for this baby that is half of all he has left of the boy he raised.  
“You shouldn't trust me with him,” he says, not looking at her. “I failed his father.”  
“That's exactly why I do trust you,” she says, not taking her eyes off him. “You won't fail his son.”  
He shuts his eyes and nods. She pretends not to notice the tears that sparkle on his eyelashes in the dim light. Leia shifts slightly in her arms, pulling away from her breast, and she stands, moving over to Obi-Wan.  
“Switch with me,” she says, breaking the moment. The hand-off takes some manoeuvring, and Obi-Wan definitely sees more of her than she intended him to, but they get settled again and as Luke begins to feed Obi-Wan looks down at Leia intently, as if cataloguing the differences between the two.  
“They won't look like siblings,” he says eventually. A guess, a hope, or a premonition, she can't tell.  
“That may not be a bad thing.” A pause before she continues. “I hope they meet each other, someday.”  
“When they're old enough you can introduce them.”  
“That's a lovely thought, but I doubt I'll live that long.” She hears him catch his breath before he asks,  
“Are you looking for death?”  
“As far as the galaxy knows I'm already dead.” Bail had sent the message to Naboo that morning. Obi-Wan is still looking at her, so she continues, “I'm about to start establishing a rebellion against a Sith Empire. I think death is going to be looking for me.” He nods and doesn't try to persuade her otherwise. He's always respected her choices, even if he didn't understand them (she wonders if he understands why she married Anakin. She wonders if he wishes she hadn't. She doesn't allow herself to wonder the same). There isn't much else to say, too much tainted grief still heavy in the air, too much potential for blame if they allow their exhaustion to rule their tongues, so they say nothing. The twins fall asleep. Neither of them puts them down.

They leave Obi-Wan on Tattooine before going to Naboo. He will stay there until Luke is grown, watch over him, keep him safe, one day tell him the truth. He'll keep his distance though, better that Luke has a normal life, and if Obi-Wan is hunted down they cannot risk him being connected to Luke. Palpatine must know that, unlike Padmé, he survived Mustafar. They will be looking for him. Even without that she has no intention of suggesting he help her form the rebellion. He left something behind on that planet and looking in his eyes she cannot see any of the duty that used to be there. He wants to live with his grief and regret, and it serves her purposes to let him. She needs to move, to begin fighting back, already this time on the ship is making her restless. But there are things that must be done first, to sever the connections to who she used to be, so she waits. Giving Luke to Obi-Wan is as hard as she thought it would be, but the necessity of it hasn't diminished, so she whispers a blessing, kisses her son's forehead and lets them go. After everything she still trusts Obi-Wan (is that because she has no choice? Best not to think about it too long).

The problem with faking her death is immediately obvious. Her rank and status mean she is owed a state funeral, and her connection to Palpatine means that his will make certain she receives one. As a man who knew her well, and one who has an investment in making sure she is dead, he will be certain to attend. One thing is clear, her and Bail will not be able to pull this off alone. She hates having to bring another person into this, but it is unavoidable. When Bail asks her who they can trust to help, only one name springs to mind. It's been over a decade, but Sabé still remembers the old signals.

They meet on Naboo, far from anywhere (a risk again, but everything is a risk now). Sabé hugs her immediately without saying a word and holds her tightly for a long time. Padmé allows herself this, holding back just as tightly, leaning into her friend just for a moment.  
“What kind of mess did you get yourself into this time?” she asks, so softly even Padmé barely hears.  
“A big one.”  
“Oh I think we've gone beyond big, Majesty.” Padmé can hear the tears in Sabé's voice, but she can feel the laughter in her body, and that gives her the strength to pull back and look at the woman who even now looks so like her.  
“I need a favour,” Padmé says, wanting to get it out of the way.  
“Anything.” The reply is immediate.  
“You don't know what it is.”  
“I volunteered to be your body double at fifteen years old, I'm not going to make a different call now. What do you need?”  
“I need to convince the Emperor that the body he sees on the day of my funeral is real.” Sabé nods, as if she had already guessed.  
“So what's the plan?”

The plan is both very risky and surprisingly simple. Padmé is going to play her own corpse at her own funeral, Sabé will be there to supervise as her lead mourner and will help her escape the tomb once everything is over. They have already explained how Bail was in the area, was hailed by the medical facility, arriving too late to see her but in time to carry her body home. But there are a lot of things that are necessary to do before she will make a corpse convincing enough. Some are simple. She amends her will, naming Sabé her chief mourner, requesting she be buried in her regal regalia (the make-up will hide the life that still burns in her, make her look like a doll, perfect and unmoving). If questions are asked over why she chose Sabé as her mourner rather than her mother or sister her handmaiden will cite an oath of service given long ago, and a final act of service required to break it. It is more difficult to acquire the potions needed to induce a death-like sleep, but Padmé has contacts and Sabé is good at going disguised and blending in. Padmé will fall asleep and will wake up in her own tomb, having lived through her funeral. The regalia will have a second purpose; no man is permitted to approach the body of a former child-Queen of Naboo, no matter how old she is when she dies. Palpatine will not be able to get close to her and hopefully that will prevent him from performing any sort of test. She wishes she knew more about the force, about how a Sith Lord could use it see through her ruse, but Anakin had never wanted to talk about the mysteries of the Jedi, and she had never wanted to push him (if she had could she have saved him? Another question not worth asking).

It's late the day before Bail is due to land on Naboo officially when Sabé asks the question. Padmé is surprised it hasn't come up before, but she's also pretty sure Sabé already knows the answer and didn't want it confirmed.  
“What am I going to tell your family?”  
“Same as everyone else,” Padmé keeps her voice steady. “I died far away. You don't know how. You want to perform this final service for me.”  
“They deserve to know you are alive.”  
“Do they?” Padmé asks bitterly. “Knowing I'm alive means that you have a target on your back. If the Emperor ever suspects what has happened the first thing he is going to do is ask the people closest to me, and if they know the truth they will have to lie to him and if he sees through the lie there will be consequences. Do they deserve that?”  
“Do I?” Sabé's question is quick and cutting.  
“That's not what I meant.”  
“I know. You needed help, help that will put the person you ask at risk. So you ask someone you can bear to lose. Am I wrong?” Padmé wishes she didn't have to answer, but Sabé deserves the truth.  
“No, you're not wrong. I'm sorry.”  
“Don't be,” Sabé says easily. “The oaths I swore still stands, I will serve you and protect you with my life if called to do so.”  
“Not once this is over. My death frees you from your oath”  
“You aren't dead.”  
“The girl you swore that oath to is.”  
“And the woman she became?”  
“She died too, I think.”  
“So who's left?”  
“I don't know. But whoever she is, she's going to fight.”

She hasn't told Sabé about the twins. She doesn't even know if Sabé had heard she was pregnant. It wasn't a secret, but Corusant is far from here, and pregnancy is a private matter on Naboo. Once the children were born there would have been an announcement, maybe even public celebration when they heard she had borne a daughter, but now the only ceremony will be her funeral. So Padmé keeps the secret. She tells herself that it is to protect Sabé, that a highly likely scenario is that Palpatine believes her dead, but believes her child lives, and if he asks Sabé she needs to be able to say honestly that she knows nothing about any child of Padmé. But she knows deep down that, for all she trusts Sabé with her own life, she cannot trust her with her children. The only people who know about them are the people that witnessed their birth, and two moisture farmers on a backwater planet. She will never tell anyone she is a mother (is she one, really? She left her children to fight a war that she cannot hope to win before they are old enough to fight beside her. Will she be a mother then, if that day comes?).

They have a closed casket acquired at the medical facility, and weighted so it moves like she is in it. Sabé meets them at the dock and introduces herself to Bail as the chief mourner. The two of them take the casket off the ship, Sabé explaining the details of the funeral which is to take place the following day as if she and Bail didn't plan it together. Padmé is hidden deep in the ship. She will leave at night, make her way to the temple where the vigil is being sat and will get ready for her funeral. She could almost laugh at the absurdity of it, at how far her life has changed in the course of two weeks. She wishes now she had spent more time talking to Obi-Wan before he left. He is perhaps the only person who could understand.

Padmé goes to sleep and wakes up after her funeral. Exactly as planned.

Sabé accompanies her back to the ship and holds her tightly one last time.  
“Thank you,” Padmé whispers, then pulls back to look her handmaiden in the eye. “Your service is complete. I release you, and pray that your path is kind,” she hesitates.  
“And that we may meet again,” Sabé completes the phrase, daring Padmé to contradict her.  
“In better times,” Padmé concedes. Sabé nods, brushes a kiss across Padmé's cheek and leaves, disappearing into the darkness. Padmé watches her go, then goes into Bail's ship. There is work to be done.

Bail leaves her on a backwater planet before he goes to collect Leia from where they left her with Yoda. Padmé had insisted; she had already said her goodbyes, no need for a repeat performance that Leia wouldn't even remember. Once Bail has collected Leia he will take her back to Alderaan and make arrangements for documentation that states he adopted Leia from an orphanage there in a few months. Her daughter will be safe for now (perhaps not perfectly so, but certainly safer that Padmé will ever be again). Time to put the twins out of her mind and get to work. She needs to build connections; there is certain to be plenty of discontent after years of war, the challenge will be bringing it together and directing it at the Emperor, and that won't be easy. At the moment the Empire is an unknown quantity, with nothing yet done in its name. If anything, the ending of the war may make people feel hopeful. That will change, she's certain, but the thought of waiting until the situation visibly deteriorates doesn't sit well with her (she's already failed to prevent it, she's not going to wait to fight it). She needs allies, people who can help her lay a groundwork, so they are ready for when things get bad (they're already way past bad, it's just that most of the galaxy doesn't know it yet).

The next few years pass. That is perhaps the best that can be said of them. They pass, and Padmé isn't discovered. The surgery helps, though it wasn't that drastic, but combined with a change of hair colour and a wardrobe designed for blending into the disreputable parts of the galaxy she looks as different from Senator Amidala as possible. She meets with Bail and they update each other on their progress, and he carefully doesn't mention Leia while clearly telegraphing that he would be happy to talk about the girl if only Padmé would bring her up first. She doesn't. Slowly, carefully, she begins to build up a network of like-minded people, finding resources, building an army from the ground up. The galaxy has started to feel the effect of the Empire, but it is still far too slow for her liking. Palpatine has always been fast and decisive, by the time the galaxy learns to fear the Empire it may well be too late. But such thinking isn't useful, so Padmé keeps moving, always pushing herself further until one day she gets careless, presses forward where she should have pulled back, and gets herself shot for her trouble. She manages to stumble back to her ship and pilot it to Alderaan though she will have no memory of how later. She activates the short-range distress alerts Bail gave her and waits. She's passed out before he even arrives at the ship.

She wakes up in the softest bed she's slept in for three years. Soft light is streaming through the window, bright enough to hurt her eyes, more used to the artificial light of a spaceship interior than natural sunlight. She knows where she must be, and chooses not to try and move, keenly aware that it’s only her stillness that is guaranteeing her current lack of pain. She drifts.

She heard someone discussing her death once, sitting in a cantina on some backwater planet. She didn't know how the topic came up, missed that part of the conversation, ears catching only once her name was said.  
“...Senator Amidala wouldn't have stood for any of this.”  
“She died didn't she, about the time of the takeover?”  
“Yeah. Official story is complications in childbirth, but I heard a rumour that there was more to it than that. Story I heard, the father of her child was a Jedi, and when he died she collapsed and died of a broken heart.”  
“Romantic nonsense. Woman like that, there’s no way she dies of a broken heart, if that’s even possible. You're a bigger fool than I thought you were if you believe that.” Padmé agreed. She was surprised to hear even a little bit of truth in the rumour, wondered if someone somehow figured it out, or if it's just random chance that led someone to connect the death of the Jedi with her own reported demise. At least they believed she's dead, but they talked about her with such familiarity that they may think otherwise if they caught sight of her. She paid her tab, and she moved on.

She opens her eyes again and Bail is sitting by her bedside. Padmé feels brave enough to shift slightly and let him know she is awake.  
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he says, voice soft.  
“How bad is it?”  
“Bad. You're going to need a few months rest to recover.”  
“I don't have time for that.”  
“If you go back out there you'll be as dead as everyone thinks you are. I won't allow it.”  
“You won't allow it?”  
“No. The rebellion needs you alive, so I'm not going to allow you to go out there and throw your life away because you are too stubborn to take a few months to rest.”  
“You aren’t going to let me leave.” Padmé bristles, only remaining lying down because she thinks she’d pass out if she tried to sit up. Bail sighs, heavy, sounding every bit as exhausted as she feels.  
“If you demanded it, I would let you. I’m no jailor. But I hope you still value your life enough to want to keep it, if not for yourself, then for those who love you.”  
“And who are those people?” She forces the words out past the lump in her throat.  
“Well me for one, and Breha.”  
“And the rebellion?”  
“They love the figurehead. We love Padmé. And we want her to stay alive.” A long silence.  
“Ok,” she says. “I’ll stay.” She feels the tension leave her muscles as she makes the decision, sees Bail smile out of the corner of her eye as she does not look at him. “So then, what’s your plan for keeping the very injured woman secret?” Impossibly, Bail’s grin gets wider.

The plan is deceptively simple. The court is in summer recess, so Breha and Bail are free from responsibilities barring any major disaster. Breha lets it be known that she wants to spend time with her family away from her royal position, and so she, Bail and Leia will be removing to a small hunting lodge in the mountains for the months of the summer recess. Food will be delivered, but there will be no servants, the guards will simply maintain a perimeter, and they will have absolute privacy. Padmé will travel as a nurse for Leia, her usual nurse being given a well-earned holiday. And so, in a matter of days, Padmé finds herself settled in a comfortable room, with a beautiful view of the mountains out of her window, and it is so much like her life used to be that it is almost painful. The first few days she just sleeps, wakes, eats and sleeps again, three years of exhaustion catching up with her all at once. On the morning of the fourth day she wakes up and feels like herself again, able to stand and move over to the window, sitting in the comfortable chair placed there. If she listens, she can hear voices from the garden below, a man, a woman. And a child. she sits back, closes her eyes, and does not think.

There are days she wakes up and her previous life feels like a dream. Like those are things that happened to another woman, stories she has heard as she travels around. Then she gets up, strips to wash and sees the stretch marks on her belly (she could have prevented them or had them removed; she never has) and somehow that tiny thing brings the reality of it all crashing back. She’s received other scars since, but none of them straddle her old life and her new like these thin silver lines do.

A few days later she opens her eyes and sees a tiny girl with brown hair and solemn eyes staring at her from the doorway. She feels her heart stutter, confronted so unexpectedly with the daughter she has so far only seen from a distance as she plays in the gardens below. Padmé pulls herself up to sitting, as if that will help her process the situation. The girl steps further into the room as if Padmé's movement was the permission she was waiting for.  
“Who are you?” she asks, not at all afraid. When Padmé doesn't immediately answer she continues, “Are you my nurse?”  
“Yes,” Padmé says. That is the story after all.  
“Then why haven't you been looking after me?”  
“I haven't been well.”  
“Are you better now?” Padmé thinks a moment, considers lying, then says,  
“Yes I am.”  
“Well come downstairs then, it's breakfast time.” She grabs Padmé's hand and does her best to pull her out of her bed, putting all her three-year-old weight into it. It’s not a lot, but Padmé doesn’t resist. She doesn’t want to. Leia leads her down the stairs, forcing Padmé to bend so she can keep hold of her hand. They don’t pause as they reach the bottom, Leia heading straight to the kitchen where Padmé can hear Breha and Bail chatting.  
“Mum, Dad, look,” Leia shouts before she even gets through the door, “I found…” she pauses, confusion passing clearly across her small face, before she turns back to Padmé and whispers, “what’s your name?” A pause, and Padmé can see Bail and Breha looking at her, eyes wide.  
“Padmé,” she says (the truth, because she cannot bring herself to add another lie to the list she has already inflicted on her daughter).  
“I found Padmé,” Leia continues, too young to feel the tension in the air. “She’s going to play with me.”  
“Is she?” Breha asks, a question aimed at her daughter, intended for her friend. Padmé nods, the decision made for her the moment Leia opened the door. “Well that’s nice, but you both need breakfast before going outside.”  
“Come on,” Leia says, pulling Padmé to the table. “You can sit with me.” Padmé does.

“What did you do to him?” she asked one night, before the separation, Luke asleep in her arms, Leia resting on Obi-Wan’s lap, awake but silent.  
“You don’t want to know,” no need to clarify who she meant. There was only one ‘him’ between them.  
“I asked,” she paused, carefully not looking at him. “You don’t want to tell me.”  
“I don’t,” a sigh, pulled out of the depths of his grief, “but I will.”  
“You don’t have to,” she said quickly, knocked off balance at his uncharacteristic display of emotion.  
“I will,” he said, firmer now. “I cannot be the only one who knows, and there is no one else I could bring myself to tell.”  
“You could tell Yoda.”  
“No, I can’t. But I will tell you.” He told her the whole terrible story, sparing no detail of the damage he inflicted on the man he had raised like a son and loved like a brother. When he was done he finally made eye contact with her and said, softly “I left him for dead.” The uncertainty of that statement sinks into her gut like a lead weight and she hears the truth he is offering. She takes a deep breath before she invites him to tell it to her.  
“You think he is alive?” Up until then they had all spoken as if he were dead, though they all had their private doubts. This conversation marked the shift, Anakin dead one minute, and alive (whatever was left of him) the next.  
“I felt his presence in the force last night. It was different, but it was him.” He sounded utterly broken, torn between grief, guilt and terrible joy. In that moment she understood him completely because her feeling mirrored his exactly. If Annakin was alive Obi-Wan didn’t kill him (another failure to pave the long path that led them all here. Another weight on Obi-Wan’s conscience? Or a weight lifted? She didn’t ask).  
“I’m sorry,” he said. She didn’t ask what for.  
“I know. Me too.” He gave her the same courtesy.  
“Yoda asked me to kill him,” Obi-Wan’s voice was quiet, not quite talking to her. “I begged him to send me to the Emperor, he told me I wasn’t strong enough. He was right. Still I protested, he told me the boy I trained was gone, consumed by Darth Vader. I had just seen what he had done in the temple, to the…the younglings. I couldn’t argue against that. When I said I didn’t know where to find him, Yoda told me to use my feelings. I had to use my feelings, which Jedi are not supposed to have, to find the man I loved, so that I could kill him. That is why I cannot tell Yoda what I did to him. He saw my feelings as a convenient way to locate the threat, and refused to understand what he was asking me to do.”  
“I understand,” Padmé said. She took his hand, gripping tight. They watched as Leia finally fell asleep.

The time with Leia sits golden in her memory, though once it is over, she finds it hard to recall specific moment. The days all blur together, playing in the sunny garden, dinners all sat together in the kitchen, questions and answers and laughter. Two weeks pass without Padmé really noticing, until one morning she wakes up and realises she can’t remember the last time she felt pain, or exhaustion, and she knows it’s time to go. She drifts through the day, already mentally distancing herself, until Bail pulls her aside while Breha is preparing dinner. He looks at her for a long moment and sighs.  
“You’re leaving.” It’s not a question but she nods anyway.  
“I’m fully recovered. There’s work to do.” Both true, but not The Truth. Bail nods and kindly doesn’t make her argue.  
“I’ll prepare supplies for you. Your ship is just over the ridge, you should be able to walk there in about 5 hours, I’ve got a map prepared.”  
“Thank you.” She’s thanking him for more than the map. “How will you explain your nurse disappearing?”  
“I’ll say you have family in the area, so you chose to stay here rather than come back to the capital.” Padmé nods. Bail takes a deep breath before asking his next question. “Will you say goodbye to Leia?”  
“Do you want me to?”  
“Yes,” he’s certain.  
“Why?”  
“Because one day I’m going to tell her about you. And if she remembers this time with you, I don’t want her to remember that you left without saying goodbye.”  
Padmé has no answer to that.

She goes into Leia’s room that evening. The room is lit only by a lamp next to the bed, and Leia is already under the covers, though she nearly falls out of the bed when she realises who has come in.  
“Padmé!” she shouts. “Have you come to read me a story?”  
“Yes,” Padmé laughs, “but only girls in bed get stories, so settle down.” Leia immediately resettles under the blanket, smoothing it out as if she hadn’t moved. Padmé picks up the reader from the bedside table and picks a story (a short one, she needs to talk to Leia before she falls asleep) and begins to read. Leia hangs on her every word, and for a moment Padmé is gripped by the thought that this is how it could have been (should have been, if things were different, if the galaxy were kinder). She pauses, swallows hard, and continues reading. When the story is done, Leia immediately cries,  
“Another!”  
“It’s bedtime,” Padmé takes a deep breath. “I need to say something first though.”  
“What?”  
“I need to say goodbye.”  
“You’re going.” Padmé nods. “Why? Weren’t you having fun with me?”  
“Yes I was, I’ve loved spending time with you. But there are things I have to do. You’ll understand when you’re older.”  
“I hate it when grown-ups say that.” Padmé laughs.  
“I did too, when I was younger.” Leia looks up, eyes big.  
“Will you come back?”  
“I don’t know,” Padmé whispers, heart breaking. “If I don’t, remember that I love you.” It’s far too intense a moment for a nurse and her charge to share, filled with far too much grief, but Leia is young, and so she replies simply,  
“I love you too.” Leia sits up and throws her small arm around Padmé’s neck, holding tight. Padmé pulls her closer. After a moment, it’s Leia who pulls back.  
“One more story?”  
“Ok,” Padmé laughs, eyes wet with unshed tears. “One more story.”

She’s gone before dawn. She doesn’t look back.

Years later, Leia will ask her father about her birth mother. She will still be young, too young to know the full truth, but Bail will tell her what he can. That she was brave, that she loved Leia, that in the right light Leia looks like her. She will sit for a moment, thinking hard before she asks,  
“Did she spend a summer with us once?” Bail will freeze, he had been sure she didn’t remember that summer, she had been so young, but he will have to answer.  
“Yes she did. What do you remember?”  
“Not much,” Leia will look through him, to the past. “She was beautiful, but sad. She had to leave.”  
“Yes she did.”  
“Why?”  
“I can’t tell you yet, but I promise I will, when…”  
“When I’m older.” She will sigh, disappointed but not at all surprised. She will pause before asking the question she has been building up to.  
“Is she dead?”  
“Yes,” a simple answer, but one weighed down with grief that still feels fresh. Leia will nod, look at her father and see her own feelings reflected and magnified in his eyes.  
“I remember one other thing,” she will say.  
“What’s that?”  
“She loved me.”  
“She did. So much.”

Padmé keeps moving, but a thought has settled its hooks into her brain. She has seen Leia, but not Luke. It feels imbalanced, unfair somehow (to them, or her?). She resists for a while, but when her search for contacts leads her to Tatooine she chooses to resist no longer. She is a practical person, and if she needs to see her son to set her mind at ease and can do it safely then she will. She will see him and then carry on. She goes to Tatooine, meets her new contact and then heads into the desert. She doesn’t go to the farm. She doesn’t plan on meeting Luke (she wants to, but the risk is too great). So she goes into the desert, and searches for Obi-Wan.

He looks so much older. That is the first thing she notices, how grief and solitude have marked him and made him almost unrecognisable. She is different too, she knows, but she chose her changes, and he clearly recognises her anyway (probably a force thing. She doesn’t ask). He doesn’t look surprised to see her, must have felt her coming and come to meet her. She had counted on that, not wanting to risk asking questions about him in town and drawing attention to them. He leads her to the home he has made in the dessert, and it’s surprisingly comfortable. He bustles around, preparing food and drink for her, allowing her the time to look at him, and match the picture of him now with the one that has lived in her memory. When he finally sits in front of her he meets her eyes and, surprisingly, he smiles, big and warm and so like the smile she remembers it brings tears to her eyes.  
“It’s good to see you,” he says, voice soft and eyes intense.  
“You too,” she replies honestly, and with a fervour that surprises her. He seems surprised too, as if he hadn’t realised how fondly she thought of him. “You’re my friend,” she says, needing to make sure he understands, “you always were. I haven’t got many friends these days.” He blinks hard, finally looking away from her.  
“You’re my friend too,” he says, voice thick. “But you didn’t come here to reminisce. What’s the problem?”  
“No problem,” she says, taking a breath, “I want to see Luke.”  
“That’s not safe.”  
“I know. I know, I just.” She pauses, gathers her thoughts. “I saw Leia.” She pauses, but he doesn’t interrupt. “I was hurt, I went to Bail for help. I needed time to recover so he said he was taking his family for a private holiday, with me as the nurse. I didn’t plan to meet her, but she’s a curious girl. But now I’ve met her, I want to see Luke. I know meeting him is too much to ask, but I need to see him. I can’t know what my daughter looks like and be unable to say the same for my son.”  
“I understand,” he says gently. “If you’d asked before you came I would have said it was too risky, but seeing as you’re here that ship has departed.” He takes a sip of his drink. “Tomorrow I need to go into town for supplies. I’ll walk past Owen’s moisture farm on the way, it comes all the way up to the ridge. Chances are he’ll have Luke with him tomorrow while he works. I’ve got some macrobinoculars in a box somewhere.”  
“Thank you,” she says, relief washing through her.  
“Eat,” he says. “It’s surprisingly good, if you don’t mind the grit.”

“What’s she like?” Obi-Wan asks later, as they lie next to each other in his too-small bed.  
“She looks a lot like me,” Padmé replies, “but her personality? She’ll be so much like him when she grows up.”  
“She’ll be a force to be reckoned with then,” he says, laughing softly.  
“Oh yes. She’s three years old but she already argues as easily as breathing. The senate will have to watch out.”  
“So that’s the plan then?”  
“If she wants it to be.” Padmé’s voice is firm.  
“Based on who all four of her parents are it’s very likely.” She can hear the smile in his voice and smiles in return, conceding the point. He answers her next question before she can figure out how to ask it.  
“Luke is almost the opposite. He looks like him, but more than anyone he reminds me of you.”  
“You’ve spoken to him?” she asks, not quite managing to keep her voice steady. She can feel Obi-Wan nod next to her.  
“I may be the strange old man who lives in the desert, but I need to go into town sometimes. And he needs to know to find me if something happens.”  
“You think it will?”  
“One day. Not soon, there’s too much work to do elsewhere to worry about this dusty planet. But one day the Empire will reach us here.”  
“Because Luke has a destiny?”  
“Because the Empire will not stop until it has total control,” Obi-Wan sighs, turning his head to look at her. “I don’t know about destiny, and perhaps that makes me a bad Jedi. I know I was told Anakin had a destiny, and perhaps he still does, though I cannot see how that will resolve itself. I do know this; I refuse to sacrifice another child on the altar of destiny. When I tell him the truth, it will be because he is old enough to know, and to choose for himself.”  
“Thank you,” Padmé breathes, turning her head to press a kiss to Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “I’m glad I left him with you.”  
“You shouldn’t have had to.”  
“No, I shouldn’t have. But a lot of things have happened that shouldn’t have.”  
“What about the last hour,” he says softly, raising their joined hands, “should that have happened?”  
“Before, no. Now?” She raises their hands further, pressing a kiss to the back of his knuckles. “I don’t know about should, but I’m glad it did.” He’s the only person in the galaxy who understands exactly what the Empire has stolen from her. They lie together in silence for a while, for long enough that she begins to think he’s fallen asleep, until he shifts slightly and asks,  
“When will you leave?”  
“After I’ve seen Luke.”  
“In which case,” he shifts again, turning onto his side so he can look her in the eye. “I’m glad I’ve seen you again. I’ve missed you.” His smile is so unbearably gentle. She reaches up, curls her hand around his neck, pulls him down into a chaste kiss.  
“I missed you too,” she whispers against his lips. He smiles again and settles back down beside her. They fall asleep.

Years later, he will hear that she’s dead. Bail will get a message to him, light on detail but heavy with grief. A routine intelligence mission. The information had got out, she hadn’t. Obi-Wan will sit down on the bed they had shared once and he will, finally, cry.

She watches her son from the ridge, macrobinoculars giving the illusion of closeness. Obi-Wan was right, even at three he looks so much like Anakin did when she first met him, and it's not just looks. He moves like him, meeting the world with open arms, not afraid, certain that, whatever happens, there is someone who loves him who will look after him. That is what Anakin lost, she thinks, that certainty that things will be ok in the end (did the loss of Qui-Gon do that, or was it not until later, with the far greater loss of his mother?). As she watches, Luke falls, running too quickly on the shifting sands and losing his footing. She expects tears, but instead he just looks up, stretching out his arms to Owen who is already coming over to help him up, dust him off and ruffle his hair affectionately. This clearly happens often, Luke's eagerness pushing him to move faster than his legs can keep up with, Owen immediately picking him up again with gruff but sincere affection. He will be happy here, she knows, until it feels too small for him, and then he will turn his eyes to the galaxy and see how far he can go. And that is when Obi-Wan will tell him the truth. For a moment she allows herself to imagine herself in that future, her friend bringing her son to her, him smiling, wide and open and happy. She could introduce him to his sister, and they could fight together. And that is where the fantasy stops. Because if they are fighting, they are fighting the man that in another, better universe they would have loved. She is suddenly, sickeningly, grateful that it is unlikely she will be the one to tell either of her children who their father is. She cannot image how that would feel, the questions that will raise, the conflict. Maybe they shouldn't be told. She remembers what Obi-Wan said, long ago, about how much he resented Yoda for asking him to kill the man he loved as a brother. How can they ask her children to kill their father and still consider themselves good? And yet she is at heart still the pragmatic senator. They will ask it of her children because it must be done, and they are likely to be the only ones with the power to do it. Leia will understand this she thinks, but she worries for Luke, with his open arms and trusting eyes. She sits on the ridge and watches him until Owen picks him up and carries him away.

Years later, on a ship that is faster than it looks, heading to a planet that will shortly be gone, Luke will ask Obi-Wan a question.  
“What happened to my mother?” He will be surprised by the sudden grief in the old man's eyes, deeper than anything he has seen.  
“She died.”  
“When I was born?” Obi-Wan will hesitate, consider telling another lie that is true if you look at it right, but will sigh.  
“No, she died later. She was working to build the Rebellion; she was killed gathering information. You would have been about six I think.” Luke will sit silently for a long moment, feeling his way through grief, pride, a brief stab of anger and abandonment. Obi-Wan will be forcibly reminded of another time, long ago, when he sat in silence on a ship with this boy's mother, and for the first time he sees that, for all his impetuosity, it is Padmé he most closely resembles.  
“Why did she leave me with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru?”  
“To keep you safe. She was a prominent senator, she knew she would be targeted by the Empire, and you would be taken from her. She wanted you to grow up happy, far away from the Empire.” Obi-Wan will make careful eye-contact, needing Luke to believe this if nothing else. “She loved you with everything she had. She loved you enough to give you up.”  
“I understand. I just wish I could have met her.” Obi-Wan will rest a hand on his shoulder, and for a moment will feel Padmé's presence, real in a way it hasn't been for years.  
“She would have been proud of you, I promise you that. Now, let's get some training in, before we arrive.” As he watches Luke wielding his father's lightsaber, uncertain at present but with promise, he will feel Padmé beside him once more.  
“I will get him through this,” he will say to the empty air. “I promise. Whatever it takes.”

She knows she is dying. Too much blood, too much pain, too far to go and there isn't enough will-power in the galaxy to fix that. She has sent the information, she has succeeded, and she tacked her status onto the end of the message, so Bail will know not to look for her. She has reached the end of the line, as she always knew she would, long before the work is done. But then, as a politician, she knows the work is never done. There is always a line that needs defending, always vigilance that must be kept. The Empire will fall, she has faith in that even now. Maybe her children will bring it down, maybe her grandchildren, maybe someone else entirely, but it will be brought to an end. But after the dust has settled the work of keeping back the darkness will begin again. That is what the Jedi never understood, she thinks. They believed that the dark side could be destroyed, that in doing so Anakin would bring balance. But that is not balance. Balance exists in the shades of grey, not good, not evil, just people doing the best they can with the choices they have. Balance is making it easier for people to make the choice to do good. Balance is fighting darkness wherever you find it, not waiting until it runs at you with a red lightsaber. Because by then it is already too late. Pain spikes for a moment, and from her pouch she digs out the single injection of strong painkiller that she has carried for six years. She will take it and fall asleep, and she will not wake again. She hopes that one day Bail or Breha or Obi-Wan will tell the galaxy her truth, how she died to live, how she fought, how she died fighting. She doesn't want to be remembered as the woman who died in childbirth, or worse, of a broken heart. She hopes one of them will live to tell her story. The pain is distant now, as if it is happening to someone else. Her eyes are heavy, the exhaustion and grief of six years dragging them down. For the first time she doesn't fight it. She closes her eyes and sees her children, not as babies, or toddlers, not as she has ever seen them in reality. She sees a young man, eyes full of hope, but steady, kind and certain. She sees a young woman, full of fire, ready to stand her ground no matter the cost to fight for what she knows is right. They are standing together and smiling. They know and love each other as they ought to have done from birth. She sees the future and it warms her slowing heart. She falls asleep.

Years later, Leia will stand in front of her mother's tomb on Naboo, a crowd in front of her waiting for her to speak.  
“My name is Leia Organa. My mother was Padmé Amidala, whose tomb this is. You were told she died giving birth to her child twenty five years ago. That is not the truth. Listen to me, and I will tell you the story that my adoptive father Bail Organa told me. I will tell you how she lived, how she fought, and finally, I will tell you the truth of how she died.” Her voice will be steady. She will not cry. She will take a deep breath, and feel Luke shift beside her, brushing his hand across hers, lending his strength. She will meet his eyes and they will smile.

**Author's Note:**

> This is more canon compliant to the orginals that the prequals are, because Leia remembers her mother, and babies don't remember shit, I don't care how cool they grow up to be. This is also definitely not canon compliant to the sequals (I know they aren't mentioned but it's important to me that you know that).


End file.
